Different from the overgrown city, its sense of alienation stems from seeing the city that we're used to robbed of motion which we associate with civic life. Apparently, a much more common image in
Twentieth Century Science Fiction film than the completely overgrown ruin. This might owe something to the fact that it's much easier to film.
- Day of the Triffids - especially BBC TV's 1981 version, which has lots of shots lingering on deserted (presumably early morning) footage of a deserted London, with weeds beginning to encroach.
- On the Beach (1959) - the main protagonists return to a dead San Francisco only to "discover the source of the signal, the random tapping of a morse key by a bottle caught in a window blind; the final horrifying irrelevance" (Sobchack, XX).
- Paris Qui Dort/ The Crazy Ray (1924) - silent film in which an inventor's ray puts freezes the inhabitants of Paris. Admittedly not the city as ruin, or even deserted, but one which shares some of the ruin's sense of the uncanny.
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